New SF Affordable Housing

SJ Mercury News: The Metropolitan Transportation Committee has committed $10 million to a $50 million revolving fund for affordable housing near transit stops. Morgan Stanley, Citi Community Capital, and several other financial and nonprofit groups to create the fund, called the Bay Area Transit Oriented Affordable Housing Fund.

Officials plan to make the first $4.8 million loan to buy a San Francisco parking lot where developers plan to construct a 14-story building with 150 apartments and a ground-floor grocery story at Eddy and Taylor streets.

It's great to see money being freed up for housing, post economic liquidity/loan contraction. Affordable housing is also chronically underfunded, as, you know, incentives skew more strongly toward non-affordable housing (read: luxury condos). Such is life, such is the market.


Map:

Street view:

Of course, the shortage of parking in SF is a bone of contention. But in the heart of downtown, I can think of better lot uses than car storage.

Salem Photo-Essay: Bike Racks

Our Chief Bike Infrastructure Photography Editor, Pacific Northwest Division, AKA MRE, has turned in an eagle-eyed debut.

Below please find some quite wonderful bike racks Our Correspondent noticed whilst perambulating scenic downtown Salem, OR.

Proof that bike racks can be an enlightening, amusing part of the small-town streetscape, though some will inevitably disagree and move to convene task forces debating the issue.

Statue of Liberty

I think that every coffee shop should have steaming-coffee-cup shaped bike racks.

Some cursory internet searching turned up some other interesting examples. Courtesy of David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame), the following were temporary additions to New York City sidewalks:

 

Seriously: bike racks could be a great way to accentuate a business's street/sidewalk presence. And provide bike parking, and public art.

SF Pulling Out All Stops

Two proposed underground subway lines into downtown.

Congestion pricing for SF's northeast quadrant.

Parking lot in the Mission slated to become a park.

MTA proposes 250 miles of bus only lanes, 100 miles of dedicated bike lanes.

And a month ago, SF Bike Coalition's plan for major, city-wide bicycle infrastructure, striping, and safety improvements.

Topsy-turvy up in here. Exciting to think about how these projects could transform the city--if any of them come to pass.

San Ramon Schools Turn Parking into Solar Power

Local high schools will soon see their parking lots shaded by solar arrays, thanks to a $23 million dollar contract the SRVUSD recently signed with SunPower, a San Jose-based company. Though the agreement was singed over the summer, the final design meetings are happening this week.

The district has posted (pdf) projections of future energy savings and general fund benefits: under the conservative estimates, it expects to save $27 million in energy costs over the first seventeen years. Estimates also peg the debt incurred (via low interest Qualified School Construction Bonds*) to be payed off in 17 years, bringing the low-ball, 25 year boost to the district's general fund to $11 million. The optimistic projection tallies that number at $30 million, based on higher assumed increases in PG&E rates and a lighter debt load.

*QSCBs are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which authorizes these special low-interest bonds for schools seeking to improve infrastructure. Fascinating to see how that stimulus is trickling down.

Investing in infrastructure that cuts fixed costs seems like a no-brainer, but especially for any landowner not expecting to relocate. Colleges, universities, and high schools spring immediately to mind. I wonder if anyone has a model for installing solar arrays in commercial parking lots, like those at regional shopping malls. What I don't know is what incentives the developer/owner would need to make such a retrofit attractive--if each individual tenant pays its own utility bill, then the incentive is small, spread thinly across all stakeholder, and probably stymied by the unusually deliberate coordination and mobilization the task would require. This is conjecture, because I do not know how such arrangements would work ... if a central body pays collective utilities, the incentive to go solar would appear to be much stronger.

Diablo Valley Community College already has photovoltaic arrays on all surface parking lots at its Concord campus. Chevron Energy Solutions, a unit of local business and energy juggernaut Chevron Corporation, partnered with DVC, Los Medanos Community College, and Contra Costa Community College to complete installation in 2008.

Parking lot arrays near the DVC football field

The Chevron press release detailed additional services provided:

1. a 3.2-megawatt solar power generation system comprising photovoltaic panels mounted on 34 parking canopies in six parking lots at Contra Costa College, Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College;
2. high-efficiency lighting and energy management systems installed at CCCCD's three colleges and District Office, as well as high-efficiency heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment at CCCCD's District Office; and
3. high-voltage electrical system replacements installed at Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College.

The Athenian School, a private college-prep partial boarding school in Danville has also installed a solar array (in the shape of an A, natch) with a slightly different approach. It partnered with Tioga Energy in what appears to be some sort of subcontractor-esque agreement--the solar power purchase agreement (PPA) signed states that Tioga Energy owns, operates, and maintains the system. Tioga sells the solar electricity generated to the school at fixed rates over a 20-year period.

Since PG&E rates will surely increase, and since the arrangement does not require Athenian to invest in a massive capital outlay, using middlemen might make modifications more manageable (alliteration, ftw). I'm assuming that Athenian's monthly savings would be less than if they owned the array, given that Tioga needs to turn a profit somehow, but Athenian is already getting about 50% of its electricity from the investment.

A little further research reveals that Tioga has signed PPAs with the Lafayette School District, five New Jersey school districts, and SoCal's Irvine Unified School District.

North Camino Ramon Plan: The Vision vs. The Present

The North Camino Ramon Plan has captivated me at least in part because its projected vision is vastly different from its current reality. As the plan states, it:

strives to meet sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction goals as the plan area transforms from an automobile-dominated, low-density commercial area to a transit- and pedestrian- oriented neighborhood that will be a community focal point with a mix of uses.

For all of you who have never been to San Ramon before, I decided to do some quick and dirty photojournalism to give you a sense of exactly how "automobile-dominated, low density" the plan area is. Slideshow @ the end.

One thing I noticed was that if you cleared the parking lots of landscaped curbs, cleared fences between parking lots, and cleared elevation grades, you would have a lot of room to build. As I biked around, I was frequently able to thread different parking lots into an ersatz right-of-way. Removing barriers between the lots would not a street network make, but there would be room for one. I say this without taking any measurements, or thinking about space for the buildings the City would presumably want to build along the new streets.

The blue arrows in the map below mark "parking lot rights of way" that, given either a dose of eminent domain, reform-minded ownership, or vigilante jackhammers, could become streets without bulldozing buildings. The red arrows mark routes that would need ... something more drastic. The blue circle corresponds to the planned center of the park that would itself lie at the middle of the mixed use retail/office/residential neighborhood.

This bears a passing similarity to the official plan:

I wonder if the final plan will insist on perfectly straight streets--a few kinks could avoid a big Planners vs. Community stand-off. But let's be clear, the parking lot right of way, even with street kinks, makes the eventual plan only a smidgen less ambitious. Those businesses all want their parking, and will be loathe to relinquish it. And the parking lot that's planned to replace lost surface parking (#5), looks like it will be built over office buildings that include local insurance agencies, HVAC management software, kiddie hair salons, and local soccer league administration. The other building the lot would replace houses the City of San Ramon offices, but hey, they've got greener grass in mind anyway: plans to build a new city hall complex (pdf) just south of this North Camino Ramon Development.

In any case, check out the slideshow of pictures I took. Here's a rough map of the route, to help you locate yourselves. The first picture starts on the northernmost street, looking west (AKA left, looking at the map), then south, then east, then the route kicks in.

"Automobile-dominated" indeed:

Quick hit: Bike parking

Leave it to the Japanese to find a compact way to store hundreds of bicycles. From what I've read, this is just in Tokyo for now, though the vid says the company is looking to expand to other metropolitan areas.

Automobile Attrition v. City Erosion

In her famous Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs asserts that priority of automobiles in urban planning creates one of two realities: automobile attrition or city erosion.

The latter is the accumulated result of many individual decisions to boost drivers' convenience: a road widened here, a curb corner softened to allow for faster right turning traffic flow, removing parking meters, and so on. Individually these seem fruitful--I can imagine an engineer pleasantly surveying his handiwork with his hands on his hips, secure in contributing to expedited travel. The aggregate, however, is a city slouching toward automobile dependency, less friendly to pedestrians and bikers, and thereby lacking the foot traffic and density to sustain vibrancy. Developments grow outward because ever more room is needed for automobiles. And a city is eroded.

Automobile attrition works in the opposite direction. Sidewalks in high ped traffic areas are widened. Buses get signal prioritization. Zoning doesn't require a mandatory minimum number of parking spaces, street parking is priced, and parking lots are behind stores, rather than separating the would-be window shoppers from their window quarry. Note that these policies are not knee-jerk anti-auto policies: they work toward a definable, positive goal. This is different from, say, shutting down a street to cars and turning it into a pedestrian mall. Unless skillfully done in the right location, removing cars doesn't do much of anything. In fact, such a move can be quite deadening. Eugene, Tampa, Boston and others learned the hard way that ped malls are tricky to replicate.

All this push/pull about the issue of cars in cities brings me to this conundrum:


At 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami, Herzog and de Meuron have built a parking garage with ground floor retail, a penthouse, and additional retail space on the 4th floor. And a distinct visual style, to say the least.

I've been torn on this for a while: I dislike that it's a monument to automobile culture, and I somewhat dislike the concrete aesthetic, though I've rarely seen concrete wielded with anything approaching this dexterity (usually you get this and other Le Corbusier knock-offs). I also worry that it might start a trend, and I fear that its less artful progeny will just be big and blocky deadspaces. Like most parking garages.

On the other hand, I love that it adds real identity to its location--it's a destination, justifiably. It nicely encloses the pedestrian promenade, and the wall-less parking levels make a usually claustrophobic space open and nearly vertiginous. As Andres Duany, king of New Urbanism, says in the above clip, it is a form of civic activism that expands a parking garage from a cramped afterthought into a public space capable of bringing people together. A parking garage as plaza--I bet architects can push that angle in neat ways, but again, I fear the less-skilled imitators (Benches and potted plants do not a plaza make, and I think the wall-less-ness only works when there's a killer view, like here).

Ultimately I'm siding with Duany on this one. I don't think automobile accommodation can be termed city eroding when it clearly adds diverse uses and visual pizazz while creating a defined a pedestrian mall at its base.

All cities need parking; 1111 Lincoln Street shows us that sating this need can also create dynamic public spaces. I hope the vibrancy sticks after the buzz wears off.

PARKing Day is coming!

September 17th, a Friday. The premise is to turn a parking space into a park, or whatever your imagination can turn a 9'ish by 18'ish curbside space into. From their website, the goal is to:

make PARK installations honest gestures of generosity and civic engagement, and to support creativity, cultural expression, socializing and play. PARK(ing) Day is about offering the casual passerby a place to just sit, relax, casually interact with folks, or just sit and do nothing.

There are instructions for how to make your own PARK, and maps to facilitate PARKing tourism. Check it out!

Hat Tip/Finger Wag

Tip of the Hat to:

NYCDOT's Park Smart Program

NYCDOT's Park Smart program, which raises the price of on-street spaces when demand is highest, has helped more people find parking in Park Slope while relieving the traffic caused by cruising for a space, according to new data released by the agency.

As intended, during the peak period, the average amount of time that drivers parked in the pilot area decreased significantly, according to DOT's analysis.

Higher turnover means more customers for the shops and restaurants that line each of those corridors. DOT surveyors counted a 17 percent increase in the number of unique vehicles parked along Fifth and an 18 percent increase along Seventh.

In neighborhoods like Park Slope, where a Transportation Alternatives study found that more than half of all traffic consists of endless cruising for a free space, Park Smart also serves as a congestion killer. During the peak period, traffic volumes dropped by five percent on Fifth and nine percent on Seventh. Traffic is down even as more people are able to reach Park Slope by car, a rare combination.


Wag of the Finger to:

 

Fine Reductions for Lawbreakers

If you live in CA, or read economic news at all, you know that CA = big budget deficit. So why the assembly approved--by a 48 to 8 margin--a penalty reduction for people breaking traffic laws defies common sense. Bill sponsor Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) poses the same issue on his own website:

"As budget negotiations continue, I would like your feedback on the proposals being discussed to close California's $19 billion deficit."

Hmm ... how about tens of millions in revenue from drivers who are ticketed for breaking the law?

Parking, Parking Everywhere

Parking Minimums lead to Sprawl: Quantitative Evidence

A team of economists from the University of Munich recently released a study examining the effects of mandatory parking minimums on development in urban and suburban Los Angeles. The team found that parking minimums "significantly increase" the amount of land devoted to parking, to the detriment of water quality, pedestrian safety and non-automotive modes of transportation.

One byproduct of minimum parking reqs is the amusing personification of "underperforming asphalt." That parking minimums lead to an oversupply seems like a no-duh situation, but quantitative results are, as they should be, the gold standard.  

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Market-based Parking in San Francisco

Circling for parking accounts for approximately 30% of driving in San Francisco.

Very interested to see how this plays out. Definitely a story I will be following.

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Privatized Infrastructure = Lost Revenue

About two years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sold off the rights to 75 years of his city’s public parking meters for $1.15 billion to a partnership of private companies led by Morgan Stanley. ... Bloomberg News, however, revealed last week that the private partnership that bought up the spaces expects to generate at least $11.6 billion in revenues over the course of the contract — producing a potential profit of $9.58 billion.

Daley wanted to implement market based pricing--like SFpark, above--but expected it to be politically impossible. In 2008, yes. In 2010, less so. 2015? Who knows, but hindsight is always 20/20.

But damn, what if cities accurately priced the real estate and construction costs of parking? Billions and billions more for the business districts and neighborhoods abutting the parking spaces, billions more for road maintenance, for transit, for ADA compliance, for bike lanes and ped paths. Reduced incentives to drive. Cleaner air. And how terrible to think that such needed revenue for reinvestment in public infrastructure might go (will go, in Chicago's case) to things like Morgan Stanley's bottom line. Yuck. But here's hoping the program, and SF's program, showcase how effective market pricing can be in reducing circling time and vehicle miles traveled while generating revenue.

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Shoupista Explains Cash Out Parking

If certain employers offer free parking (a subsidy to drivers), they are required to pay an equivalent amount to employees who do not drive. A parking cash out.